I do not own Chuck

Chapter 4

"So that's the whole of the first target area checked," Chuck observed disappointedly as he finished briefing his team. They'd been on the station for four days now, and hadn't made any progress. "If no-one has any objections, I suggest we push on and focus on Red-ninety two?" He looked over at his team, four humans and five dog-agents. No-one seemed to have any issues.

"Morgan, Greta - any luck tracking Frank Chung?" Despite staking out some of his reported favourite places they hadn't yet managed to set eyes on Volkoff's deputy Frank Chung.

"No Chuck," his friend replied after exchanging a look with his erstwhile partner. "He's not been sighted for several days."

That was very strange. "That's peculiar," he observed, adding, "What about Volkoff's other associates?"

"With Volkoff gone it looks like his network is starting to break up. Some of his juniors in other sectors are making plays for their own operations and some of his competitors are also looking at the bits they like." The speaker was Lieutenant Alex McHugh of the Alliance Marines, one of Beckman's intelligence officers who had been attached to their operation. Chuck had caught Morgan looking at her more than once, which didn't seem to have endeared him to his partner. Greta had apparently taken a fancy to his bearded friend. The poor guy was going to have an interesting time when the dog-agents' bodies were restored. So far it seemed that Lieutenant McHugh was completely unaware of Morgan's attentions, which might actually have been a good thing! Morgan, after all, wasn't the best at interacting with the opposite sex. He tended to get verbal diarrhoea and would probably end up saying something wildly inappropriate.

Clearly Chuck wasn't the only one who'd noticed, as Carina's expression looked amused and her tail was twitching. Morgan had had something of a thing for Carina the one time their paths had crossed previously, a regard which Carina had not returned. In fact, she even kept getting his name wrong (which Chuck actually thought was on purpose). It seemed she was quite happy to see Morgan go onto pastures new now. Especially as she seemed to have rekindled her on-again, off-again affair with Casey since they'd been turned into dogs. Dog-Casey, it seemed, had tried it on with most of the females, and even some of the males. Who knew that Chuck's partner was such a lothario? As a human he rarely showed emotion but as a dog he seemed to be more passionate the longer he stayed as one. Carina and he had had something in their past (which Chuck had been unable to find out about in their past life) and it seemed that whatever it was, there was still an attraction. Dog emotions being somewhat less complicated than human emotions seemed to have helped to rekindle the relationship. With bells on, if some of the noises Chuck had heard coming out of the dog rec area had been anything to go by.

Bryce had also tried it on with the other dogs but received somewhat shorter shrift than Casey. In fact, he'd been the recipient of some pretty nasty bites and had even had to have the tip of his tail sewed back on after Greta had made it abundantly clear what she thought of him. Both Sarah and Chuck had had a bit of a giggle about that! One of the bites had been from Sarah after all. Even as a human Bryce had struggled with the meaning of the word "no". As a dog it seemed he was worse.

Chuck quickly hid the smile which bubbled to the surface at the thought of his one-time nemesis in such dire straits. He looked around the room. Ellie had noticed that he'd not been paying attention and looked at him quizzically. He smiled to suggest he'd tell her later. Sarah seemed the only other one who'd noticed and he smiled across at her.

"OK guys, let's focus on Red ninety-two. Ellie, Devon, you're on point today and we'll go after Mr Chung's hang outs. Morgan and Greta – keep working on the surveillance. Any questions?" he looked at his team and received only shakes of the head. "OK, let's get cracking."

"Chuck!" His sister's voice cut through Chuck's sleep like a hot knife through butter. He'd been coding, working a lead on the dog reversal programme and must have fallen asleep at his desk.

"Receive Ellie," he ordered, sitting up and stretching. Sarah perked up from her position on the bed.

"Chuck, Casey found something." His sister sounded anxious.

"What?" he asked, reaching for his utility belt to strap around his uniform. The chrono said he'd been out for about two h-units.

"I don't know. We were in a café in Red ninety-two. We finally found Chung, and this tall brunette was talking with some of Volkoff's other people and then she turned as we left so we could get a look at her. Casey just seemed stunned, then he told us 'person of interest' and just took off after her."

Something didn't add up here. "Wait, why didn't you follow?"

She sounded slightly embarrassed. "Well, we sort of got separated."

"What do you mean you got separated?" he grated out. He'd assigned Bryce and Casey to her for protection after all.

"Well, to get closer to Chung we needed a cover so we took Bryce over to play with the kids in the kids area. We've been teaching them about dogs while Devon films Chung and his people. If we take Bryce now there's gonna be a riot. They're playing dress up." Her voice became momentarily less serious. "He looks gorgeous in a dress!"

"Did Casey manage to get a chip on Chung?" he asked, trying to keep the conversation in point. He'd ask Devon for a picture later. His brother in law and sister hated Bryce with a vengeance for what he'd done to Chuck, and he was sure they'd have got a pic of anything that made Bryce look bad.

"Yeah, ages ago," came the slightly distracted reply.

Chuck looked at Sarah. Was that amusement in her eyes? He wasn't sure he could keep the grin off his. Bryce would just have to take one for the team.

"Leave Bryce then," he told her, ignoring the distraught whimper which came over the com lines just then. He knew Bryce hated kids. "He'll have to extract himself. You and Devon get back to the ship ASAP and start preparing and we'll go link up with Casey. OK?"

She acknowledged and they signed off. He finished checking his equipment, made sure that Sarah's belt was on her, and headed for the canine rec area to pick up Carina. "Call McHugh, Grimes," he ordered.

They both acknowledged quickly. "Were you monitoring?" he asked, as he and Sarah all but ran along the corridor. They both acknowledged that they had been. "I got a feeling about this one," he told them as they found Carina waiting for them outside the rec area wearing all her gear. Clearly he wasn't the only one. "Bring the strike team to alert," he ordered as he dived out of the airlock.

"What do we got?" he asked as they spied Casey lurking by a corner.

"We've analysed the footage," came McHugh's voice from the ship. "The woman is Gertrude Verbanski. She's a mercenary for hire these days with her own business, but ten years ago she was an agent for the Core Worlds." The Core Worlds was a mercantile alliance of 12 planets close to the central zone of the Alliance. Nominally allies of the Alliance, often their dealings were right on the edge.

"And Casey's come across her before?" he asked, looking at his erstwhile partner who, even as a dog, looked slightly pained.

"I can get that they've interacted, but everything else is classified. I can't break through the protocols and neither can Lieutenant Grimes," replied McHugh.

"Call Beckman," he ordered. "We need that data." Just then there were voices on the other side of the corridor and he flattened himself back against the opposite wall as a group of five people headed towards the door through which he assumed Verbanski had passed. It was Chung and his crew.

Waiting for the group to pass through the door he signalled his team again. "Do you have anything on this section?" Chung's people had walked through here like they owned it. Which meant they probably did. But it didn't show up on any of the data he'd been able to pull for Volkoff's holdings.

"No Chuck," this time it was Morgan. He assumed McHugh was busy getting hold of Beckman. "But now I look at the deck plan, it is adjacent to one of Volkoff's storage areas. Could they have expanded?"

He looked at his dog-agents. "Or it's always been here but we just didn't know about it," he observed. "Are we under surveillance here?"

"There's a camera on the door," This time it was Sergeant Uttley, McHugh's assistant. "Beyond that it's difficult to get a reading. There must be some sort of damping field."

He looked at his team. They all looked back at him. It was now, he knew it.

"Stand the Marines to," he ordered. "We're going in. If you don't hear from us in two h-units, come get us. We'll find some way to be in touch if we need you before then. Call Woodcombs," he paused. "Ellie, you and Devon stand to as well. We may need medical support."

All his subordinates acknowledged him and he failed to see the look of pride which passed between Casey and Sarah as he handed out orders. Finally he looked at his partners. "What do you think? Up front approach?"

They all nodded at him, so he unfurled himself from the wall, dusted himself down and walked nonchalantly down the corridor, pausing outside the door through which Chung had passed and pressing the call button. "Open up!" he called, "Environmental inspection!"

Well, that went to Hell in a hand bucket pretty damn fast, Chuck thought. It had seemed to work OK at the beginning. The receptionist had opened the door. On the other side of the bulkhead, the damping field was fully active, so there was no way they could get a signal out but all cameras would need to be wired and insulated which made them easy to spot. He'd spotted several and, positioning himself and the receptionist in a blind zone between them, he'd tranked her, and then got to work on the cameras themselves.

He'd developed a floor plan of the entire extended area which, he'd been able to see, did in fact extend into Volkoff's known holdings. Chuck had set up a handcom so that he could plug into the comp system at various points and check the cameras, and then they'd commenced their search. The first few compartments were of no interest. Well, no interest unless you wanted to start a war, and then you could find all the equipment you needed! But if you were looking for the preserved bodies of thirty intelligence agents and Alliance officers, not so much!

It was swiftly becoming clear that this was one of Volkoff's major trading nodes and he'd totally missed it. But he couldn't beat himself up just then. They had a job to do here.

It was as they were changing sections that the trouble started. First of all, Casey's acute canine nose picked up a scent. He pawed Chuck's leg and signalled, "Scent found, recognised." That focused the mind, and then as Chuck checked the cameras, he saw there was trouble. They didn't owe anything to Verbanski, but seeing her in a loading bay strapped to a chair, surrounded by Chung's people and having the shit kicked out of her wasn't something that Chuck could just leave. Casey took one look at the pictures and ran off.

Human Casey would never have done that. The man was so in control of his emotions that he was nearly emotionless. Dog-Casey was so out of control of his emotions that he was almost flakey. He could still be professional, but when he saw something he wanted to do he would just do it. Clearly this Verbanski meant something to him.

Chuck thought for a second but he didn't really have a choice. Once Casey was spotted their secret was out. They were the only dogs on the station and there was no way Casey was on his own. While it was absolutely priority number one to find the agents' bodies there was no point in finding Casey's body if he managed to get himself killed first. Chuck considered asking Carina to continue searching but there was no point in separating their remaining team.

Chuck couldn't even contact Casey to tell him they were coming. This damn damping field. Luckily the loading bay was near where they were. Chuck tunnelled into the camera system and locked everyone else out apart from himself. He didn't imagine Casey would have retained enough of his wits to keep to the blind spots and he could at least give them a small element of surprise.

Reaching the far door of the loading bay had necessitated going around the storage areas where Casey had found the familiar scent. Carina and Sarah, by nature of their breeds, didn't have as strong a sense of smell as Casey but they'd also picked up familiar scents on the way and Chuck knew they were in the right ball park. He took the time to deploy a beacon for the incoming marines in case everything went to shit. He assumed they'd take down the damping field before they breached.

Entering the cargo hangar, Carina was the first to spy Casey in the shadows at the far end. One thug was standing guard on Verbanski whose head lolled to the side. On first glance she looked unconscious and certainly the amount of blood on the deck around her chair would support that, but Chuck could see her gently picking the lock on the handcuffs she was secured with, out of sight of the guard. The other four were talking to one another, clearly trying to decide what to do next.

The cargo bay was rectangular in shape, with the makeshift interrogation area about two thirds of the way along from where they'd sneaked in. The doors were open at either end, but there were two closed doors to what Chuck assumed were storage areas on each long side. The bay itself was filled with a number of cargo containers on the deck which made it somewhat maze-like apart from the interrogation area. At the end where Casey had come in was some tall equipment which Chuck recognised as null-grav loaders. This cast shadows from the overhead lights which had so far allowed Casey to remain undetected.

"OK," Chuck intoned quietly, hoping Casey could hear him. The damping field meant they couldn't use their coms. "Casey, can you hear me?" The German Sheppard's head jerked up. "We're gonna talk about this later Mister, but for now we've got work to do." He couldn't see if the male dog-agent had a contrite expression. Given past experience, he thought probably not.

"It looks like your girlfriend is about to break free. When she does, Sarah and Carina – I want you to make a distraction for as long as you can." The two made acknowledging moves. "Casey, you get in there and lead her out and I'll try and take out as many as I can." He hefted his gun which was currently set for tranquilisers. It was silent and accurate and, in a station environment, much better than a projectile or energy weapon. Plus, it helped his conscience. He knew that Sarah and Casey didn't have a problem with killing people; it was an integral part of their job. But it wasn't really him. He'd joined Fleet to serve, to explore and discover. He understood that sometimes killing was necessary but it wasn't something he would do if he could avoid it.

Bringing his thoughts back to the situation at hand, he moved himself behind better cover and set up to get the best view of the enemy positions. Just because he didn't shoot to kill, didn't mean he wasn't able to shoot. Hanging around with Sarah and Casey it had been necessary to improve his self-defence skills. The older man had been surprised to find that he was a great shot. He hadn't told the man when he suggested Chuck should learn how to shoot that he'd been a medium distance champion at the Fleet Academy. You needed to shoot on Lizzie where they'd grown up for a time; the native fauna made that so. He'd enjoyed showing the other man up. He'd paid for it in the gym the next day, but it had been worth it.

Sarah and Carina had moved back to the doorway and now started a play fight, barking and snarling. Several things happened at once. Chung's men all swung around to face them, startled at the noise and readying their weapons. Verbanski made her move, although she had a leg injury and wasn't that mobile, and Chuck made two shots and dropped two targets. His third shot had just dropped his third target when Verbanski's leg collapsed and Casey seized her collar with his mouth, dragging her over the deck.

"What the-?!" came from Verbanski's and Chung's mouths at the same time as Chung's last henchman opened fire on Sarah and Carina. Chuck managed to drop him but, seeing his men incapacitated, Chung had moved to cover. Suddenly the damping field dropped and a klaxon cut in.

"Shit!" Chuck wasn't sure if he just thought it really loud or said it. But it gave him an opportunity as well. "Call McHugh – Emergency!" he shouted, over the sound of pulsar bolts exploding around him. Chung had obviously spied his position. He kept an eye on the other man, switched his own gun over to pulsars and loosed a few shots of his own as Chung went to take some pot shots at Casey.

"Copy," came the reply. "Status?"

"Under heavy fire. Casey evacuating with injured friendly," he reported as the dog-agent managed to pull the injured woman out of the loading dock. He managed to hit the exit button with a shot and the doors closed behind them. The trouble was, that made him Chung's sole target. "Emergency breach!" he ordered, receiving an acknowledgement just as one of the sets of doors opened on the other side of the bay and three of Chung's henchmen ran in. He was exposed and he managed to get one, but the others fired almost immediately. A lucky shot hit his weapon and, reacting instantly, he threw it aside knowing what was going to happen.

As the weapon exploded, he dived for the opposite door to the one that the henchmen had entered through. The explosion was massive and he was helped on his way by the blast wave. He heard a noise of canine hysteria as Sarah barked up a storm from the opposite side of the bay, but he needed to take advantage of the lull in the attack so he reached up, conscious of the agony in his side and opened the door. Crawling through, he found himself in another storage area. Lights were flickering on and he set to securing the door, hoping that there wasn't another way in. "Sarah, Carina, go for help!" he ordered, conscious of the weakness of his voice. He heard the sounds of disagreement. "You can't do anything in that form," he tried, biting back the pain to get the words out. "The best you can do is guide the Marines here as quickly as possible." He paused. "Please Sarah."

He didn't hear anything else and managed to finish his work breaking the door mechanism. And then he collapsed against the wall, sliding down it. He was conscious of the pain in his hand which had been closest to the exploding gun and was pretty ripped up. He'd been holding it near his side and as he looked down there was a big hole in his abdomen as well. He'd have been dead if it wasn't for his military-grade nanites. He felt that they'd kicked in and were trying to help knit the damage but the blood was still spewing out of him. "Command, deploy torso suit," he ordered and his space armour deployed over his lower body, providing support for his side and, hopefully, slowing or stopping the bleeding.

Which is how he found himself stuck in this room, contemplating how it had all gone downhill so fast.

He'd lost a lot of blood. He could see it on the floor and the bulkhead. He looked down at it dopily, stunned, as the noise of shooting and banging came from the bulkhead. They were trying to break in here. He wondered where "here" was, lifting his head to look around. He was surrounded by what looked like Cryo tubes. Staggering over to one and supporting himself with his side, he pulled away the cover to see who was inside.

He reared back in surprise. Of all the Cryo tubes in all the world, he had not expected to see his mother in one. His mother. Mary Bartowski was supposedly dead. That's what his father had said anyway. Sent to infiltrate Volkoff's organisation, found out, and killed. But maybe not. She was in a cryo tube here. Chuck checked the read outs. She was alive. There were her details. Frozen here for over five years. Name: Frost. It was rather apt, Chuck thought. Was it a code name? It wasn't the time for wondering about that now.

He staggered to the next tube. It was Greta Harris. This was the right place then. He was conscious of the fact that his vision was greying a little around the edges. He needed to find… he needed to find. Ah. Here she was. As he pulled back the cover he was met by the face of the woman he loved. Her face looked at peace, eyes closed.

"Bartowski!" the voice emanated from the chip in his ear.

"Yes General." Even to his own ears his voice sounded spacey.

"Bartowski! The Marines are on their way. You need to hold on."

Was that concern in the irascible woman's voice? "You almost sound concerned Aunt Di," he told her. Wait a minute. Had he just said that? Called her Aunt Di. To her face. He jerked up.

"Yes you did Bartowski, and we'll talk about it later," the slightly amused voice came from light years away. "But that requires that you DON'T DIE!"

"Is that an order General?" he enquired listlessly.

"Yes, Chuck, it is," the older woman replied. "We've invested too much in you for you to kick the bucket now young man."

"We?" He felt floaty.

"Casey and Sarah and I," she replied. "When they first said we should bring you on board, I didn't understand what you could bring to the table. But you three are my best team Bartowski. And I want you to carry on being my best team."

"She's here. Sarah's here," Chuck stated, reaching out for the glass covering over her face. He felt suddenly tired. He could manage a nap just here, lying on the Cryo tube looking at his girlfriend's beautiful face.

"Bartowski!" he heard as if from a distance. Then, "Major, this is Beckman. Hurry up, we're losing him." Then, "Hold on Chuck. The Marines are on the other side of the bulkhead. They'll be with you in a few seconds."

"Did you just call me Chuck, Aunt Di?" he asked, smiling, "That's the first time."

"It isn't actually," the older woman's voice answered. Her voice was relaxing. It was soft. It was friendly. He focused on the soothing voice and the face of the woman he loved in the Cryo tube in front of him as he drifted off.

He woke to feel a warm weight on his shoulder. In fact there was warmth all along his left side. He was momentarily discombobulated, but then recognised that he was in a medical bay. He opened his eyes and sat up, which dislodged Sarah's head from his shoulder. Her eyes snapped open but then, seeing him looking at her, she emitted a yowl of pleasure and moved over to rest her head against his cheek, moving her paws to sit on his shoulders. It was the closest they were able to come to a hug in this form.

"About time you woke up, Sleeping Beauty!" It was Ellie, seated in a chair next to his MedPad. "You cut that one fine Chuck!" she observed, somewhat acerbically.

"Sorry, wasn't expecting the reinforcements," he told her. "Or my gun to blow up." He looked down at his hand, but most of the damage was repaired. The new pink skin covered most of the carnage. He lifted the sheet to check his side. What he could see looked OK.

"The Marines got to you just in time," his sister explained. "Your partners were quite frantic. Sergeant Uttley was heard to refer to them as 'those mad dogs'." Ellie's voice was dry and Sarah snuffled out what might have been a laugh.

"Are the others OK?" he asked.

Ellie gave him an old-fashioned look. "There were no injuries to our team apart from you. Verbanski's a bit beat up and Chung was touch and go for a while, but they'll make it and General Beckman's already looking forward to his interrogation."

"How am I?" he asked.

"The nanites and your decision to close your suit almost certainly saved your life," his sister offered. She looked somehow smaller than he'd ever seen her then. Normally she was so confident, almost larger than life.

"All's well that ends well then," he observed, striving for some levity. Sarah leaned back, giving him the eye and growled at him. He got almost the same look from Ellie. This unholy alliance might gonna be a problem.

"Too soon?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the human part of the duo, and Sarah agreed with a grumble. Something occurred to him. "Hey, the strangest thing…" Something else had just occurred to him. Two things in fact. "Maybe three."

Sarah cocked her head at him interrogatively. "Your body was there wasn't it?" he asked. She nodded, and he couldn't help the grin. "I saw Greta's. Were the others there?"

"Yes," replied Ellie, "and-"

"Mum's," they both said together. "Wow, so I wasn't dreaming?"

"Nope, you weren't," his sister confirmed.

"Do we know what happened?" he asked.

"No, we have to take her – and there were others by the way, who were presumed dead – back to base." His sister cocked an interrogative eye at him. "And the third thing?"

"I could have sworn Aunt Di was there…and she called me Chuck!"

Chuck looked up as their last passenger came through the tube. Close to, Gertrude Verbanski was really quite striking. Tall and slim and not pretty exactly, but definitely she had something about her. She stood waiting for something and then Chuck had to smile as Casey came through the tube behind her. According to his reports, Verbanski was rather taken with what she thought was just a dog. She didn't know that he was a human, but it was like she sensed that something was special about him. They'd barely been separated since he'd dragged her out of the cargo bay.

Chuck had seen the medical report and Verbanski had not been in the greatest condition, but she'd survived. At her interrogation (which Chuck had not attended) it had turned out that she had had intelligence about a special cargo that Volkoff had hidden on this base. She'd seduced Chung to get access to the storage area, but Chung had been suspicious and had caught her in the act. Cut off from her support by the damping field, it had looked pretty grim for her until Chuck's team had intervened. She had already thanked Chuck and was en route to their base for discussions with General Beckman about sharing what she knew of Volkoff's network. It was her way of paying his team back. That meant she needed an escort and Casey had eagerly volunteered for that task.

Chuck had finally managed to pry out of Aunt Di what Casey's connection was with Verbanski and had been surprised. It turned out that Verbanski was one of Casey's few failed missions. He had gone up against her over a defence program chip when she had been with Core Worlds Intelligence. Details were scarce about what had happened on the mission and Aunt Di wasn't telling, whatever else she knew.

His boss had surprised him. He didn't remember a lot of what had happened when he'd been injured, but since then it was like they were closer somehow. Like the relationship had changed. She was still her irascible self, but somehow it felt less personal. Almost like she was going through the motions. There was an element of humour in their relationship now and he could have sworn he'd caught a teasing element in her voice on several occasions.

They still had no more intelligence on how his and Ellie's mother had ended up in Volkoff's hands. Unlike the agents turned into dogs there appeared to be mind activity in many of the other bodies and it was wholly possible that they were simply in cryogenic storage. The possibility that their mother was still alive had never occurred to Chuck and Ellie and had brought up a lot of feelings. This was not helped by the fact that Chuck was increasingly convinced that their father was still alive. He hadn't shared that possibility with Ellie, but he thought she probably suspected it.

He didn't really know what to think about their parents. When push came to shove they'd both abandoned their kids one way or another. He knew that Ellie and he were not alone in that. Many parents opted out of bringing their kids up after they were 12 years old and went to Acad. But it had hurt when their parents had just upped and left with no explanation. Maybe they had their explanation now, but the fact was he didn't know if he could forgive his parents for running away. His family was Ellie, Devon and Morgan, and now Sarah and maybe Casey. He was happy with that. He cared about all of them and he knew they cared for him. None of them would never leave without saying goodbye, even Casey. Not like both of his parents.

Sarah nipped at his leg and he realised he'd been wool gathering. She looked at him quizzically. "I'll tell you later," he told her, before speaking to his com, "Bartowski to bridge."

"Bridge, McHugh," he heard, which made him smile. It was Morgan's shift, but it seemed that Lieutenant McHugh had finally rumbled to Morgan's interest in her.

"Tell Morgan to clear docking clamps. I'll be up in a jiffy."

"Acknowledged, sir," she told him, signing off.

He looked down at his partner. "Well, I think it's time we got going. I'm looking forward to quite a long snogfest with my beautiful girlfriend when we get back." He strolled off, pausing when he didn't hear her following.

She was sitting on the deck staring at him. "Too much?" he asked, struggling to suppress a grin. She barked and sprang at him and he ran towards the bridge, Sarah chasing along behind him.

Fingers crossed.

A/N That's all folks! I kind of left this open on purpose and planned to gauge whether there was any interest in continuing to explore this universe but, given the drop in reviews, I would guess not. I know some of you are interested to find out about Sarah and Chuck's interactions when she gets turned back. If you want me to write an epilogue, leave me a review! If there's interest I'll have a crack, if not we'll leave it there. Thanks to all who have reviewed.